Eine Apologie des “Spekulanten” gab’s bei Cohu schon mal hier. James Surowiecki (“The wisdom of Crowds” und Finanzexperte des New Yorker) ist, wie zu erwarten, der gleichen Meinung wie Paul Krugman.
Aber warum absolviert der Ölpreis denn dann Höhenflüge? Neben der fraglos gestiegenen Nachfrage bei nahezu gleichbleibendem Angebot und Problemen wie einem drohenden Irankrieg weist Surowiecki auf einen interessanten Effekt hin:
“But there’s also something else at work, which the oil guru Daniel Yergin calls a “shortage psychology.” The price of oil—more than that of many other commodities—isn’t based solely on current supply and demand. It’s also based on people’s expectations about future supply and demand, because those expectations determine whether it makes sense for oil producers to sell their oil now or leave it in the ground and sell it later. Currently, the market is assuming that oil will become scarcer, and that global demand will keep rising (…) Now, it could be that these assumptions are all wrong (…) In that case, oil would turn out to have been hugely overpriced. But that won’t be because of sinister speculators; it will be because oil producers and oil users collectively misread the future.” (The New Yorker, Financial Page: Oily Speculations)
Da man anonyme Massen aber wesentlich schlechter beschimpfen und zur Verantwortung ziehen kann als den pösen, pösen Spekulanten, wird sich an der politischen Praxis der Spekulantenbeschimpfung auch weiterhin nichts ändern:
“That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans.”
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